Last week the Kern High School District Board voted to approve a plan to allow teachers with concealed weapons permits to carry their guns on campus. The move was controversial, both because of the topic, and also the last minute nature of the meeting and vote. Harold Pierce of the Bakersfield Californian Harold Pierce joined us to talk about this story and other news regarding the district.

Earlier this month California voters approved a big change to education in the state when they passed Proposition 58. The initiative overturned prior voter-approved restrictions on bilingual education in the state. Now local districts are gearing up to implement the new law. Education reporter Mackenzie Mays of the Fresno Bee joined us on Valley Edition to talk about that story, and other news involving Fresno Unified schools.

Fresno’s University High School is routinely ranked as one of the top public high schools in the nation when it comes to academics. It was started over a decade ago to give students a college preparatory education with a focus on English and math. But the charter school’s future is in now question as allegations have surfaced that UHS has used allegedly discriminatory perquisite requirements, which the ACLU contends are illegal. Critics also say the student body is not representative of the...

The Youth Orchestras of Fresno and the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles will share the stage of the William Saroyan Theatre in Fresno this Friday night at 7:00 PM. YOOF director Julia Copeland joined us on Valley Edition to talk about why this event is important for local efforts to expand orchestral opportunities in the valley for underserved communities.

The Fresno Unified School District is laying out what it plans to do if voters next month approve Measure X, a $225-million dollar measure.

The biggest single chunk, $90-million dollars, would go to constructing more classroom space and a new elementary school in Southeast Fresno. It’s part of an effort to reduce the roughly 1,000 portable classrooms still in use. $25 million would be used to expand the district’s career and technical education, and another $50 million would go...

Back in the 1990’s researchers discovered something that has wide ranging impacts to anyone interested in early childhood development. Children who grow up in families struggling with poverty hear 30 million fewer words by age 3 than those who grow up in more affluent homes. The idea is that academic success and achievement in many other areas, begins far earlier than many previously thought. It’s an idea that our next guest has first-hand experience with. Pediatric surgeon Dana Suskind is...

More than 100 students are enrolled in classes for a new minor at Fresno State this semester. That degree? A minor in Hmong Language studies. The minor is the first of its kind on the West Coast and the fifth Hmong minor in the country. What sets it apart is that it focuses on actually speaking the language, not just culture. Fresno State Professor D r. Kao-Ly Yang wrote all six textbooks for the program. Yang says the minor is a chance to train young Hmong people to become the next leaders...

Linguistics professors and students at Fresno State are hard at work on a mammoth task - saving the language of the Chukchansi tribe of Mono Indians. One thing makes their task especially difficult - there are only 12 speakers of the Chukchansi language left. We talked with professors Brian Agbayani and Niken Adisasmito-Smith about their work, and the challenges of not only documenting the language for posterity but also keeping alive and in active use.

It’s back to school season, and that means there’s a lot of news right now about local school districts. None more so than the Kern High School District, which serves more than 35,000 students in Kern County. Harold Pierce of the Bakersfield Californian joined us on Valley Edition to give us a recap of the latest news around KHSD. Last school year controversy rocked the district as the board voted to authorize concealed weapons on school grounds, and struggled with new mandates on bathroom...

Shipping containers have been used for everything from community gardens to pools and even homes. In rural Madera County one farmer is using these containers to help him save water on his sheep farm. He says a shipping container could actually be a solution to drought. At Golden Valley Farm , about 10 miles northwest of Madera, Mario Daccarett’s employees are milking 500 sheep in rounds of 12. As they hook up long clear suction cups to each animal’s set of teats, milk drains down tubes into a...